Digital hearing instruments are known in this field. Many digital hearing instruments include programmable digital signal processors (DSPs) that enable the hearing instrument to flexibly implement many different processing algorithms. Typical programmable DSPs, however, consume a large amount of power when compared to a fixed hardware implementation of the same processing algorithms. Thus, many programmable DSPs may be non-optimal for power-sensitive applications, such as digital hearing instruments. Restricting a digital hearing instrument to fixed hardware implementations, however, may overly constrain the flexibility of the device. The present invention overcomes several disadvantages of typical digital hearing instruments by providing a hearing instrument having a low-power reconfigurable processing unit.